The Crudités Effect

There are certain mornings when I wake up, feel sleepy-happy for a moment, and then remember what the day holds in store for me and wish I could just sleep through it. This usually happens on days when I have to a) take a test, or b) see my extended family.

I know that I probably qualify as a bad person because of this. I know that I should be thinking about the precious time I have to spend with my relatives. Even so, the prospect of going to my aunt's house to eat dinner with my mom's side of the family always makes my insides churn. And it's not because my grandfather is raving or my aunt and uncle have had a falling-out or my sister can't hold her liquor. (My sister CAN hold her liquor, by the way. I've never seen anyone "sample" so many wines.) It's because, well...my relatives just aren't that interesting.

Actually, that's not quite true: they are all cool by themselves. My aunt, for example, is still a teenage girl at heart, and likes to talk about clothes and movies. My uncle is on a school board and so knows all the newest, hottest ways that kids are busting through Internet filters. My grandmother can fly a sea plane--end of story. But when they are all gathered together around a plate of crudités and assorted nuts, a strange phenomenon occurs: they morph into people who have things in common. And the things they have in common are 1) food, 2) disease, and 3) other relatives.

I do not enjoy talking about food. For me, food is something to be eaten. Perhaps, if I was any good at cooking, I would give a crap about exactly how my uncle--and, for good measure, everyone he knows--prepares turkey. Perhaps I would listen intently as my grandmother recounted the history of her lasagna-making career. But as much as I like eating, I have no passion for cooking. I cannot even pretend to be interested when someone talks about it (unless it is Julia Child, whose burbling rasp of a voice makes me crack up every time).

The same goes for disease and distant relatives, which tend to come up in conversation at the same time. Not only have I never met most of these people, and know them solely by what illness they have; it annoys me that I only hear about them because of their declining health. Do these distant relatives have lives? Probably. Does anyone talk about that? Hell no! It's almost as if disease is the new hot gossip, although none of these people ever seem to die--in fact, from what various conversations would suggest, there is a close friend of my grandmother's who fell ill, died, and somehow came back to life and got sick again. Or maybe I'm just not paying attention.

God, that was callous. In fact, this entire post is unusually contemptuous, and I'm sorry about that. I try to be sensitive about people I don't know getting sick; it just depresses me that of all things, that is what my family chooses to talk about, every single time. And what's worse is that the Crudités Effect has an influence over me as well. I can literally feel myself become awkward and boring whenever we pull up in my aunt's driveway. There's only so much I can talk about with my family--for example, they don't seem interested in books, unless those books are about Shackleton--and there's only so much I can say about food. After about 20 minutes, I am reduced to eating cashews in silence. Which is a pity, because the cashews will run out after a short while, and I'll still have another 5 hours to go.

There are two things I can trust to save me from those long hours of boredom and awkwardness: Pie and Younger Cousins. Pie is simple, seeing as it's so good that the only word anyone utters while eating it is "Delicious." My younger cousins are not delicious, but if they come to the dinner, it can only mean one thing--that I will be dragged down into the basement and be tickled and beaten up until it is time for Pie.

And honestly, that is fine by me.